Isabelle Faust, violin

Isabelle Faust adopts a perspective on music in which ever-new experiences and discoveries are the principal focus. Having founded a string quartet when just eleven, her early chamber music experiences imbued in her a fundamental belief that performing is a process of giving and taking, in which listening is just as important as expressing your own personality. Victory at the 1987 Leopold Mozart Competition, when she was just 15, brought with it the prospect of a solo career. However, the guiding principles instilled in her as a chamber musician remained strong.

After winning the 1993 Paganini Competition, she moved to France, where she grew to love the French repertoire, particularly the music of Fauré and Debussy. Here she came to international attention with her first recording - sonatas by Bartók, Szymanowski and Janácek - and gradually refined her command of the most important works in the violin repertoire. Isabelle Faust has since appeared with some of the world’s finest orchestras, including the Berliner and Mí¼nchner Philharmoniker, Orchestre de Paris, Boston Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, and Mahler Chamber Orchestra, under such conductors as Claudio Abbado, Giovanni Antonini, Jiri Belohlavek, Franz Brí¼ggen, Daniel Harding or Mariss Jansons.

Whilst not neglecting the classical and romantic repertoire, she is a noted interpreter of the great twentieth-century works of Feldman, Jolivet, Ligeti, Nono, and Scelsi. She has premiered pieces by such composers as Olivier Messiaen, Werner Egk or Jörg Widmann, and works dedicated to her by the composers Thomas Larcher and Michael Jarrell. Isabelle Faust has made several recordings of chamber music for harmonia mundi on both modern and period instruments with partner Alexander Melnikov. Many of her critically acclaimed CDs have won prizes, including the Diapason d’Or and the Gramophone Award. Isabelle Faust plays the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ Stradivarius of 1704, kindly loaned to her by the L-Bank Baden Wí¼rttemberg.